PHP is a great language for developing web applications. It is essentially a server-side scripting language that is also used for general-purpose programming. PHP 7 is the latest version, which provides major backward-compatibility breaks and focuses on providing improved performance and speed. With the rise in demand for high performance, this newest version contains everything you need to build efficient applications. PHP 7 provides improved engine execution, better memory usage, and a better set of tools allowing you to maintain high traffic on your websites with low-cost hardware and servers through a multithreading web server.
Chapter 1, Create a User Profile System and use the Null Coalesce Operator, we'll discover new PHP 7 features and build app for storing user profiles.
Chapter 2, Build a Database Class and Simple Shopping Cart, we'll create a simple database layer library which will help us access our database. We'll cover some tips on making our queries secure, and how to make our coding simpler and more succinct with PHP 7.
Chapter 3, Building a Social Newsletter Service, we'll be building a social newsletter service, which will have a way for users to sign in using their social login and allow them to register to a newsletter. We'll also make a simple admin system for managing the newsletters.
Chapter 4, Build a Simple Blog with Search Capability using Elasticsearch, you will learn how to create a blog system, experiment with ElasticSearch and how to apply it in your code. Also, you will learn how to create a simple blog application and store data into MySQL.
Chapter 5, Creating a RESTful Web Service, shows you how create a RESTful web service that can be used to manage user profiles. The service will be implemented using the Slim micro framework and use a MongoDB database for persistence. The chapter also covers the basics of RESTful web services, most importantly the common HTTP request and response methods, the PSR-7 standard and PHP 7’s new mongodb extension.
Chapter 6, Building a Chat Application, describes the implementation of a real-time chat application using WebSockets. You will learn how to use the Ratchet framework to build stand-alone WebSocket and HTTP servers with PHP and how to connect to WebSocket servers in a JavaScript client application. We will also discuss how you can implement authentication for WebSocket applications and how to deploy them in a production environment.
Chapter 7, Building an Asynchronous Microservice Architecture, covers the implementation of a (small) microservice architecture. Instead of RESTful web services, you will use ZeroMQ in this chapter for network communication, an alternative communication protocol that focuses on asynchronicity, loose coupling and high performance.
Chapter 8, Building a Parser and Interpreter for a Custom Language, describes how to use the PHP-PEG library to define a grammar and implement a parser for a custom expression language that can be used to add end-user development features to enterprise applications.
Chapter 9, Reactive Extensions in PHP, here we'll look into the Reactive extensions library for PHP, and and try to build a simple scheduled app.